Bon Clay's Smile

Golden light shone on the Sky Screen, and the first frame showed the inside of Impel Down's main gate.

Time marker: original timeline, the eve of the Paramount War.

The dark passage reeked of disinfectant and rust, mingled with the stench of decay. The lights flickered, and water dripped from the ceiling onto the moss-covered stone floor.

A man in a swan-shaped leotard came running out from deep in the corridor, moving in ballet steps. He was so fast that the metal plates on the tips of his shoes gave off a high-pitched whine.

He ran ahead of Luffy.

"Bon Clay, which way do we go?" Luffy's face was covered in blood, and his body was covered in scabs from venom burns, but his eyes were still bright.

"Left! Turn left, then go straight for three hundred meters and you'll reach the exit to Level 4!" Bon Clay shouted back as he ran.

Tears streamed down his face, but he was smiling.

He laughed so loudly that the feathers on his swan hat shook.

"Bon Clay, why are you crying?"

"Am I crying? I'm not crying! These are tears of excitement!"

"Breaking out of prison with Straw Hat is the most glorious moment of my life!"

He wiped his face hard with his sleeve, then turned back around and continued leading the way.

The footage moved at a rapid pace, and together with the alarms and explosions sounding one after another throughout Impel Down, it had an absurd tension to it.

The footage quickly cut to the moment Luffy collapsed from the poison.

Magellan's venom covered Luffy's entire body. The deadly poison seeped through his skin into his blood, and Luffy was rapidly losing consciousness.

Bon Clay hoisted Luffy onto his back.

He was neither tall nor muscular, nor was he a gifted master of physical combat. Carrying the unconscious boy, who was much heavier than he was, he stumbled and scrambled through Impel Down's corridors.

"Don't die, Straw Hat!"

"You're going to save Ace, aren't you?"

"You still have something you absolutely have to do, don't you?"

"So don't die in a place like this!"

His ballet slipper slipped on the stone floor, and his knee slammed into the ground, scraping off a layer of skin, but he didn't stop.

He got up and kept running.

Blood ran from his knee all the way down to his ankle, leaving a broken red line across the floor of Impel Down.

The Sky Screen showed the route from above. The red line stretched from Level 3 all the way to the entrance to Level 5.5.

People all over the world watched that red line, watching how many times the man in the swan costume fell and got back up along the way.

No one was laughing anymore.

The footage cut to Emporio Ivankov's treatment room. Luffy had been placed on the operating table, and Bon Clay knelt outside the door.

"Please, Lord Ivankov!"

"Save him!"

"He's my best friend!"

Emporio Ivankov looked at the man kneeling in a pool of blood outside the door and adjusted their sunglasses.

"The price is steep. He'll suffer hellish pain during the treatment, and whether he survives depends on his own will."

"He'll survive." There was no hesitation in Bon Clay's voice.

"Straw Hat will definitely survive."

"Because he still has something he has to do."

Emporio Ivankov was silent for two seconds, then closed the door.

Outside the door, Bon Clay shouted without stopping for ten whole hours.

"Hang in there, Straw Hat!"

"You can do it!"

"Get back up!"

Ten hours.

He knelt for ten hours and shouted for ten hours, until his throat was completely inflamed.

Luffy survived.

When the door opened, Bon Clay could no longer stay on his knees. He had fallen on his side beside the doorframe.

Luffy stood inside the room looking at him, then crouched down.

"Bon Clay, thank you."

Bon Clay got up from the floor and looked at Luffy through eyes so swollen from crying that he could barely open them. Then he threw his arms around him.

"You're alive, you're alive, you're really alive!"

"Bon Clay, you're squeezing too hard. My bones still hurt."

"I don't care! Let me hold you for a while!"

The footage fast-forwarded to the final escape.

Luffy led the people he had rescued from Impel Down toward the Gate of Justice. Marine warships were already waiting, and Magellan's pursuit force was right behind them.

The Gate of Justice was the only way out.

But it could only be opened from the inside.

Bon Clay used the Mane Mane no Mi to take Magellan's appearance and gave the order to open the gate over the communicator.

The gate slowly opened.

Luffy stood in the light at the exit and looked back, but he couldn't see Bon Clay.

"Where's Bon Clay?"

His voice grew urgent.

"Where is he?"

"Go!" Emporio Ivankov grabbed Luffy.

"He can't come back!"

"What do you mean, he can't come back?" Luffy's voice rose.

Bon Clay's voice came through the communications Den Den Mushi.

He was laughing.

"Straw Hat, go."

"Aren't you going to save Ace?"

"Go on."

"Don't look back."

Luffy stopped on the threshold of the Gate of Justice, the open sea before him and the iron gate closing behind him.

"Bon Clay!"

"Shh."

Bon Clay's voice came through the Den Den Mushi, thick with tears, but he was still laughing.

"Don't say my name like that. You'll make me cry."

"You're already crying!"

"No, I'm not!" Bon Clay sniffled. "These are tears to send you off. This is the romance between men!"

He paused.

"Straw Hat, we're friends, right?"

Luffy's lips trembled.

"Of course we are."

"Then that's enough."

Bon Clay's laughter came through the Den Den Mushi, a messy sound full of tears and snot, not pleasant to hear at all.

"Through wind and rain, we walk the road of friendship together!"

"Bloom, flower of friendship!"

As he shouted the last word, the Gate of Justice slammed shut with a rumble, separating him and Luffy on opposite sides forever.

The image on the Sky Screen froze on the closed iron gate.

On this side of the gate was Luffy, seen from behind, his arm outstretched toward it, his mouth open as he shouted a name that would never reach the other side.

On the other side was Bon Clay, sitting on the floor with his back against the iron gate. His swan hat was crooked, half the tips of his ballet slippers had worn away, his body was covered in wounds, and tears streamed down his face.

But he was smiling.

Facing the empty corridor, he smiled with all his might.

The image went completely black.

The whole world was silent.

In a fishing village in the East Blue, an old fisherman's pipe went out. He held his hand up, having forgotten to lower it.

In the tavern in Foosha Village, the sunflower seed shells in Lin Qi's hand slipped through his fingers and scattered across the table, but he didn't notice.

He stared at the black screen for a long time.

"Bon Clay." His voice grew very soft.

"You smiled as you closed that gate."

"Then Luffy went to Marineford and fought an earth-shattering battle. The whole world was talking about him."

"But from beginning to end, no one mentioned you."

"No one knew that Luffy made it out of Impel Down because a man in a swan costume locked himself on the other side of the gate forever."

He glanced at the global emotion data the system had brought up. The tearfulness reading had hit another red peak.

"Bon Clay's story isn't over yet." He scrolled down.

"The verdict and reward have to be worthy of him, too."

On the Sky Screen, the black image slowly began to brighten, and the system's verdict appeared line by line.

[Regret assessment: Bon Clay's sacrifice was the most silent price paid in the entire Paramount War. He was remembered by no one, appeared in no postwar reports, and received neither a commendation nor a tribute]

[He did just one thing: open the gate, send his friend away, and stay behind]

[He was the quietest hero of the Paramount War, and the most forgotten name]

The text stopped there.

Then another line appeared, its golden letters brighter than ever before.

[Now, he will no longer be forgotten]